Patients on my mother’s side of the complex do not walk alone. They are always accompanied, occasionally by another patient or a relative but usually by a member of staff. Doctors do not wear white coats so sometimes it is hard to tell them from patients. Once, when Scott and I visited Mother with Larry and Jane, Larry went right up to a dishevelled old man who always seemed to be around and grabbed him by the hand. I had taken the man to be a long-term patient but now it was revealed that he was a senior psychiatrist who had once worked with Larry.
Sasha pulls up to the security guard at the gate. Faces scan us from behind thick glass before anyone appears. The guard, who is uniformed to look like a police officer, asks for proof of everyone’s identity and there is much clucking and clicking of purses in the back seat.
‘Are you all visiting the patient?’ he asks.
‘No, just her daughter,’ says Sasha, gesturing to me.
‘Please get out of the car and come right around here,’ instructs the man. He looks me up and down suspiciously. He examines my card, holding it up to the light as though it could be a forged $20 bill.
Finally he hands it back. ‘I’m sorry. But we have to check. We got a celebrity, big-time, in rehab and women have been trying to get past me all day.’
We drive into the grounds. The grass is decorated with a pattern of perfect misty triangles. When the sun catches them they seem to throw out small rainbows.
‘Ah, even the sprinklers are beautiful here,’ sighs Aunt Zina, her eyes searching each face we pass. None looks like a big-time celebrity.
‘Such a peaceful place,’ Aunts Zoya and Zina agree. ‘Look at the trees. Look at the flowers.’
I enter the low, red building with exactly the feelings of despair and helplessness I felt entering Redbush as a teenager. In those days, anything could happen. Mother might be all charm, welcoming me as an honoured visitor, asking me polite questions, looking with an exaggerated fascination at the photos I brought. Or she might sulk and refuse to talk to me. Or she might be zealous in her pursuit of some obscure principle, or angry with me, or conspiratorial in her hatred of a staff member or fellow patient. Gradually, as she aged, she mellowed into silence. Visits became more of a chore than an ordeal.
Sasha, as if detecting my mood, puts a plump, leathery arm around me.
‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to stay in there long,’ he says.
We are told to wait in the conservatory. The aunts speculate, in busy whispers, about who the big-time celebrity might be. I know what they are saying because, although they speak Russian, names I recognize jump out of their conversation.
I wander around the conservatory, picking up magazines and putting them down again. I look across the lawns for the celebrity. I am nervous. I make a mental list of topics I might talk about.
A man in a loose green uniform arrives. He looks at all of us and nods recognition to the aunts.
‘We can’t take so many,’ he says, ‘you know that.’
They explain, simultaneously, that only I am to see Mother today. The man looks confused until I step forward.
‘Miss Schaffer? Hi, I’m Jonathan, Tanya’s nurse.’ His familiar use of my mother’s first name, and not just her name but its diminutive, startles me and I am slow to respond when he extends his hand. He holds mine firmly in a grip which must be useful for difficult patients. He says: ‘Please come with me to your mother’s room.’
I fall in behind him obediently but the nurse is friendly and hangs back so that we can speak.
‘How long are you home from New York?’ he asks. We pad past colourful, childish paintings along the hallway. The nurse’s feet are almost noiseless. ‘Your mother says you got a real good job there.’
‘She said that?’
‘Oh sure. She’s proud of you. She talks about you a lot.’
‘Mother does? She talks about me?’
‘Why the surprise, Miss Schaffer?’
‘I thought Mother didn’t speak much any more.’
The nurse smiles as he holds a door open for me. ‘There are days when she’s real talkative.’
‘Have the police been back to interview her yet?’
‘They came just once.’
‘When are they coming back?’
‘Well, they did say they’d be back next week sometime with an interpreter because Tanya just gave them one big lot of Russian but I’m not sure they’ll bother. I think they understood she wasn’t going to be too much help.’
‘When did Daddy last visit her?’
‘Saturday.’
We are standing outside a door and the nurse clearly intends to open it but I obstruct him.
‘Did he stay long? Did you see them together?’
‘Oh, I don’t know how long he was here, maybe a half hour. I saw him at the beginning when I escorted him in, like I’m escorting you now. And at the end.’
‘Did he seem… just like normal?’
The nurse’s face splits, revealing large teeth. ‘Now normal is not a word we tend to use around here, Miss Schaffer.’ His tone is teasing. ‘But..’ he says, ‘Tanya was sort of upset afterwards. Not sort of. Very. She was very upset. I couldn’t understand it because usually when your father goes she’s quiet and contented.’
‘Did she explain why?’
‘Well, no, she did’t. She cried a lot. I would say, as you’re asking me, that her mood has been melancholy since his visit. I mean, she seemed upset before your sister came to break the news of his death.’
‘As if she guessed what was going to happen.’
‘I have come to believe,’ he says, ‘that the human mind works on a lot of levels and we don’t understand them all. When people don’t function in the normal way we think they’re handicapped. But at other levels, they may flourish.’
He reaches across me to open Mother’s door. I swallow hard as her room is revealed. Smaller than I remember it but even more like an expensive hotel. The drapes are heavy, the door handles elaborate. At first I can’t see Mother at all but the nurse leads me to a small bundle of humanity wrapped in a fluffy blue shawl which sits huddled on a chaise longue. An old woman I at first mistake for Grandma.
‘Your daughter’s here!’ says the nurse jovially.
‘Hi, Mother.’ I want my words to slip along easily but I fail. I sound tense. I stoop to kiss her thin skin then sit down some feet away from her. The hunch of her shoulders, her smallness and frailty, the protuberance of her limbs, all this reminds me ludicrously of a balloon which has lain around the house long after the parade, slowly losing air.
Mother is looking out of the window and does not acknowledge my presence. I say: ‘So, how are you?’ but to my relief she does not respond. It’s going to be just as Jane told me. I’ll chat to her a bit and sit with her in companionable silence and then, duty done, I’ll be free again.
The nurse has been busy in the adjacent bathroom, filling a vase for the small bunch of flowers I brought.
‘These are beautiful!’ he comments jovially, emerging with the vase. ‘Anemones. Tatiana sure likes blue. Right, Tanya?’
Mother does not respond but the nurse continues just as though she has.
‘Yup, sure you do. The last time Eric came, he brought some blue flowers, right?’
No response. The nurse keeps up his side of the conversation. ‘That’s right. I mean I only threw them out this morning. Say, Tanya, do you want your eyeglasses? So you can see your daughter and the beautiful flowers?’
But Mother gives no indication of any interest in flowers, daughter or eyeglasses.
‘She really doesn’t see well at all these days,’ shrugs the nurse, holding out the glasses. ‘Want them, Tanya?’
Mother ignores him and he puts them down on the table.
‘She won’t mind,’ says the man to me, ‘if you move closer. She may not see you too clearly way back there.’
I acknowledge his words but I do not move. I feel something like panic as he walks towards the door.
‘I’ll be back in around twenty minutes but if you want to leave before, or you need me for anything, you can just push that button.’
The button is red. It is hidden discreetly by the drapes. The door clicks shut behind him.
We sit in silence. I study Mother’s white skin. Despite the impression of great age, she is unwrinkled. Her eyes are large and their blue is paler than I remember, as though they thin as her mind loses its substance.
I start to talk, awkwardly at first, my voice rusty and my speech hesitant. I tell a little about the funeral and the people who’ll come, how Sasha and Aunt Zina will be taking Mother. I try to speak to her as though she’s a fully functioning adult but sometimes I hear false notes in my voice: a forced cheerfulness or a patronizing tone. Occasionally Mother’s hands make tiny scratching movements and sometimes she blinks, otherwise she is still. I do not know if she is listening to me or if she can understand anything I say but gradually I find her silence liberating. I start to talk about Daddy, how I miss him, until I almost forget the still, silent woman. I say: ‘This grief is different from when Stevie died. I mean, it’s another shock but after the shock, then the grief is different.’
Suddenly, Mother’s face turns to me. She is nothing more than a ghost now but I recognize, as if for the first time, that she is the ghost of a beautiful woman. I fall silent. She watches me, silent too, and I absorb her madness and her unhappiness.
We stare at one another for more than a minute, my Mother and I. It is hard, as it always was, to hold her gaze. I had a childhood horror of her stare and would hide my face behind my hand or stand on one leg and look at the ground to avoid it. Now, when I realize that she is opening her mouth to speak, my heart beats faster. Gradually, its movement unhurried, her face twists. I shrink back in recognition at this process. The first time I saw her face twist this way was in the desert on the sweltering silent blacktop, when I emerged, limping, from the canyon.
The room feels hot now and small balls of sweat seem to ricochet over my skin but I am unable to move. I watch as her face twists until it is inhabited by a cruel, monstrous creature and involuntarily I brace myself against the back of my chair, ready for the beast to strike.
She speaks in a whisper and she spits with venom. She says: ‘Why did you do it?’
I notice, through my fear, that her accent is as thick and un-American as Aunt Zina’s. I didn’t notice it as a child and when I remember her I eliminate it.
She waits for a reply but I have none. My heart is pounding and sweat is speckling my face and body like glitter now. My hands hurt as they clasp the scrolling on the chair arms. She is not small, old and helpless but a deadly snake and I am a little girl who is terrified of her. She leans forward. She hisses: ‘Why? Why did you hate him so much?’
Involuntarily I jump up. My fingers scratch at the folds of the drapes for the red button. When I find it and press it a light in the button flashes but there is a disconcerting silence. I hope it is working. I press it again.
I hardly dare look back at Mother and when I do so it is through half-closed eyes as though I am looking at the sun. She says something more, something incomprehensible in Russian. Then she turns to the window again and her face unwinds. By the time the nurse arrives she has almost resumed her earlier vacancy.
‘Everything okay?’ he asks, looking at me hard and then at Mother. Whatever residue of her anger remains, he knows her well enough to detect it.
‘Oh Tanya, did you turn mean?’ He is apologetic. ‘Are you all right, Miss Schaffer? She was really looking forward to seeing you, I don’t know why she had to turn mean.’
He walks towards me and gently takes my bare arm. He examines it lightly.
‘Did she harm you?’ he asks.
I shake my head but he continues to examine me for damage.
‘You sure she didn’t scratch you?’
I shake my head again. I cannot speak.
‘Okay, Tanya, well, I guess your daughter has to go now.’
Mother ignores him and I do not say goodbye. As the nurse and I make our way silently back down the hallway he says: ‘She couldn’t do much damage but she does try to scratch sometimes. I have to keep her nails real short.’
We can hear the aunts, giggling and gabbling in Russian, their voices raised now and then lowered, as we approach down the hallway. Sasha looks at me closely. I do not look back.
‘Sounds like you ladies are having a good day out,’ says the nurse, smiling at them.
‘Perhaps you think they don’t see each other often,’ says Sasha. ‘They, believe it or not, live only one block apart.’
‘Oh, but it’s such a treat to go out together!’ they protest loudly.
‘Since you have known of this treat for days, why has it been necessary for you to speak for so many hours on the phone this week?’
Aunt Zoya’s long, thin body wavers over Sasha. She says imperiously: ‘Young man, would you attempt the Olympics without training for it?’ The upright bodies of the two women collapse into hearty laughter. Sasha rolls his eyes at the nurse and me.
The two men try to stand at one side of the conservatory to arrange Mother’s attendance at the funeral. They try to discuss whether the nurse should accompany Mother but Zina and Zoya refuse to be left out and interrupt constantly with comments and suggestions, transforming the men’s hushed conversation into a noisy drama. How is it that Mother’s elder sisters have such animation while her own house, apart from the sad, vicious ghost which occasionally rattles through its rooms, is empty? Finally they agree that Sasha can manage with only the help of his mother and aunt. Mother will be taken to the funeral and she will return immediately afterwards without eating at the house.
‘Boy,’ says the nurse, backing off with mock exhaustion, holding his hands up in mock defence. ‘Boy, I’m sure glad I only have one of you sisters to take care of.’
Aunts Zina and Zoya yell with delighted laughter.
The nurse starts to go, then pauses. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he asks me quietly.
‘I guess so.’
He looks at me curiously but walks on.
As we leave, the aunts cluster around me, so busy and noisy I feel surrounded by many people.
‘How did you find our Tanya? Is she very much changed?’
‘Well… I guess she’s a bit smaller and older.’ My voice sounds hollow.
‘Despite the difference in colouring, you look a little like her,’ says Aunt Zoya.
‘It’s true, it’s true,’ agrees Aunt Zina.
I say: ‘I don’t want to be like Mother.’ And in that moment, as we cross the parking lot, I hear again the click clack of my own walk, with its threat of imbalance, an advancing imbalance which cannot be controlled. The aunts, perhaps alarmed by my tone, are busy assuring me that only in the matter of great beauty do I resemble Mother.
‘And Jane too,’ one adds.
‘Absolutely,’ confirms the other. ‘Jane also has great beauty, so rare in both sisters of one family.’
But by the time we reach the car they have fallen silent and I am the subject of sidelong and significant glances from all three.
‘Lucia…’ begins Sasha. ‘I fear that your reunion was not entirely a happy one.’
I look away from him across the green lawns. I am trying to dam my tears, dam them at a source somewhere lower than my eyes, somewhere almost as low as my belly.
‘Oh my poor Lucia,’ moans Aunt Zoya softly.
‘Dear child,’ mutters Aunt Zina. ‘How you suffer.’
And at this kindness the dam breaks.
28
The four of us find a seat near the parking lot and sit in a row looking right ahead of us as though we’re in a movie theatre. I sob between my aunts.
‘Did she shout?’ they ask.
‘Did she scratch?’
Finally I say: ‘She really seems to hate me.’
‘No, no, she adores you.’
‘She has certainly always adored yo
u,’ Aunt Zoya insists. ‘Let me remind you that she could barely be parted from you when you were a child, even for a short time. And you, Lucia, were a most devoted daughter.’
‘Consequently,’ adds Aunt Zina, ‘the change in her was harder for all concerned. Including Tanya. She has suffered much.’
‘And,’ says Aunt Zoya, ‘you should always remember that your mother’s illness is the result of circumstances and not something you pass to your daughter, you understand.’
‘She’s schizophrenic,’ I point out. ‘There’s a strong genetic element.’
‘Doctors can call it what they like, in our opinion it was entirely due to circumstances,’ Aunt Zina insists.
And suddenly it is obvious to me that there were circumstances. All my life people have hinted that there were circumstances in Russia but their detail has been withheld and I have been expected simply to infer their emotional significance.
I ask: ‘What circumstances?’
Sasha, at the end of the bench, rearranges his legs. He’s seen the movie before and he knows it’s a long one.
Aunt Zoya says: ‘In Moscow we were a lucky family. Papa was in a trusted position with a large apartment and a large family. Both were a privilege. But it was impossible, even as children, not to know what was going on all around us. And Tanya had the misfortune to witness it with her own eyes. That’s all. I don’t think she was ever the same again.’
‘What did Mother see?’
The aunts exchange glances. Aunt Zoya is silent and when Aunt Zina starts to speak she looks away.
‘Her best friend out at the dacha was a girl, Rita, of similar age and in a similar position. Our fathers were friends. The girls were playing one day in the orchard or the forest, I don’t remember where, but I know they had climbed a tree, when they heard men. They hid in their tree and watched. What they saw was nothing so unusual. But they would have done better to close their eyes.’
Summertime Page 27